The productivity blog Asian Efficiency – blog isn’t a big enough word, AE is a huge deal I should check on more often – argues that you should stuff productivity and instead focus on your energy. Because without energy, you can’t be productive. This feels like a theme of the week for me because writer Thang Pham begins with sleep:
Sleep is the first thing we tend to sacrifice when life gets busy, but it should be the last. When we don’t get enough sleep, our decision making skills, quality of focus and engagement drastically go down. Every book on neuroscience I’ve read verifies this.
The problem is that we tend to mask it with 3 cups of coffee a day but that doesn’t fix the root cause. Then when friends and family come to me for a solution, they look at me weird when I tell them to sleep more.
It sounds so counter-intuitive, but it’s that one thing that actually makes a huge difference.
Forget about time management. Focus on this instead – Thanh Pham, Asian Efficiency (undated)
I’m not sure it’s the best article Asian Efficiency has done. I’ve got a lot of OmniFocus advice from the site before and this one feels a bit lecturing. But the advice in the full piece is good, I think.